Scientists are on the cusp of fulfilling a decades-long quest: to use vaccines to teach the immune system to spot and destroy cancer cells. News that an mRNA cancer vaccine developed by Merck & Co. and Moderna Inc. kept melanoma from returning in a large, late-stage trial marks a critical next chapter for a technology beleaguered by post-pandemic political backlash and years of false starts before then, according to the Tribune News Service.

The concept of cancer vaccines has been kicked around for over a century, and in the past 20 years, we’ve seen countless hopeful headlines about promising early-stage treatments. None of it panned out. Coaxing the body into fighting its own battles turned out to be a lot harder than it sounds.

mRNA is finally moving the field beyond the “hope” and “promise” phase. Merck & Moderna’s Phase 3 study combining the personalised mRNA-based vaccine intismeran with the immunotherapy Keytruda is offering the........

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